Sunday, February 26, 2012

We are making our way
through John’s gospel. John’s
gospel is about Jesus. But the Jesus depicted
here is not the historical person. John’s Jesus is an imaginative
construction. The events and the dialogue we just read from
chapter ten are probably not events and dialogue that took place, that someone
(ie. the author we call John) wrote down, but rather, a scene created by some
author we call John.

Now that makes a big
difference. For those who believe that
the Bible is inerrant, to say what I just said would be blasphemy. To say
that there is a difference between the historical person of Jesus and theological
and literary construction of Jesus really messes with people’s heads. Some people get angry about such a suggestion.

That was the reaction to
the work of the Jesus Seminar in the 80s and 90s when they meticulously went
through every saying and deed attributed to Jesus in the canonical gospels and
in other gospels to see what could be historically plausible and what was
literary or theological creation.
Folks were mad as heck.

Not only were the folks
who didn’t want scholars messing with their Jesus upset, other scholars were
upset as well. It appears that they didn’t
like that the Jesus Seminar did this all in public and offered their methods
and conclusions in language that non-specialists could actually read. The Jesus Seminar let the cat out of the
bag.

This type of
historical-literary criticism has been used in academic circles for decades,
centuries even. But it was so shrouded in academic language
that it seldom left the academy. We
preachers got the message both from seminary and from our congregations that
sharing this type of stuff with church folks was unhealthy to one’s
career. Furthermore, we were instructed that offering
critical assessments of scripture or theology was damaging to the faith of the
sheep.

The sheep are
simple. The sheep need to be fed. The sheep need to be led. The sheep need to be protected against wolves
like the Jesus Seminar and against hired hands who don’t care about the sheep,
like ministers who share blasphemous ideas like ‘Jesus probably didn’t say most
of the stuff the Gospel of John said
he said.’

Won’t somebody think of
the sheep?

Baaaa.

One of my favorite
criticisms over the years has been by other ministers that I am leading my
sheep astray. That would be you. In this schematic you are the sheep and I am
the shepherd. How is it that ministers
made that assumption about themselves? Who
dreamed up this plan? Even the word “pastor”
comes from the pastoral metaphor of a shepherd as pastor of the flock.

Now
granted some
ministers are quick to say, “Jesus is the shepherd. But we are the
under-shepherds.” Yeah, whatever. There is a reason why those in
authority
like to think of themselves as shepherds or under-shepherds. That is to
have control over the sheep. It is loving control of course. Because
the sheep need to be fed. The sheep need to be led. The sheep simply
cannot handle life at all
except that a loving shepherd tells them what to eat, where to sleep,
and what
to think. If you are a sheep you don’t
need to do a lot of thinking. Mostly just
obeying. Listen to the voice of the
shepherd and follow.

In the Five Gospels, the Jesus Seminar wrote
this about the tenth chapter of John:

“…there is no echo here of the authentic voice of Jesus; the Johannine
community is attempting to work out its self-definition in terms delivered from
the scriptures.” P. 436.

In other words, John made it up.

John borrowed images of shepherding from the Hebrew Scriptures in
places like Ezekiel and the Psalms and of the story of David as a shepherd boy
and applied them to Jesus. I doubt that the historical Jesus ever thought
of himself as a shepherd. To me Jesus
was more like a guy who would say,

“Don’t wait for a shepherd. Be
your own shepherd.”

His parables and
aphorisms were about inspiring people to find their own voice and to use
it.

“The kingdom of God is within you!”

“You are the light of the world.”

“You are the salt of the Earth.”

Why then does John turn Jesus into a shepherd?

This is not about
Jesus. It is about John. He wants sheep. The theme throughout John is to believe what
"we" told you. “We” being the ones who
control and own the story. Some
scholars suggest that the original ending for The Gospel of John was the end of chapter 20. It is the scene in which Thomas the doubter
is scolded by Jesus for not believing the others.

“’Do you believe because you have seen me?’ asks Jesus. ‘Those
who can believe without having to see are the ones to be congratulated.’”

Then the book seems to
end with the narrator saying:

“Although Jesus performed many more miracles for his disciples to see
than could be written down in this book, these are written down so you will
come to believe that Jesus is the Anointed, God’s son—and by believing this
have life in his name.”

Don’t doubt. Believe.
Be a good sheep.

Elaine Pagels in her
book Beyond Belief suggests that the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Thomas (that did not make it
into the Bible) represent competing communities. Whereas John
saw Jesus as an object of belief, Thomas
saw Jesus as inspiration to discover oneself.
This section in which Jesus addresses the character Thomas, Pagels sees
as a dig at the community that centered itself around the Gospel of Thomas. Don’t be
like Thomas. Don’t be like that group. They will lead you astray.

Interesting stuff. Thomas’
Jesus is made up too, although the Jesus Seminar discovered that more of the
sayings of the historical Jesus have been preserved in Thomas than in John. However, Thomas’s
Jesus is also a creative theological fiction as is John’s Jesus. These early
communities were competing over not only who Jesus was but who Jesus is.

Those competing visions of Jesus were competing ways of living. That competition had to do with
authority. It had to do with
boundaries of who is in and out of the community and what was the hierarchy of
authority. One can imagine that it
might be easier to build a church around the Gospel of John than around the Gospel
of Thomas.

I offer this critical
assessment for a number of reasons. The
Bible is not always what it seems. It
was created by numerous human authors.
Every one of them had an agenda. They created these stories and these images
for a variety of reasons. Reasons that
we may never know.

Still today these
stories in the Bible are used for certain agendas. People will quote from the Bible and from
Jesus as if it or he were the final authority and then claim authority as under-shepherds
to interpret it and him for you.

Now you may say, "John
Shuck, why should we believe you?" My
answer is you shouldn’t. If you disagree
with my interpretation of the Bible,
good for you. Be your own shepherd. I can’t
lead you astray if you are not sheep.

If I succeeded at least
in part by encouraging you to look at John’s
gospel, and actually the whole Bible, critically, good. That was my devious plan. I also
want to offer another spin on the shepherd story.

There is something that is endearing and comforting about the shepherd. In our busy industrial society, the notion
of leaving it all and moving to Kansas to wander around with sheep all day
sounds like a pleasant idea.

There is a reason why
the most beloved psalm, the psalm that is most likely to be known by heart is
the 23rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,

He makes me like down in green pastures,

He leads me beside still waters,

He restores my soul.

He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil.

For thou art with me.

Thy rod and thy staff

They comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,

Thou annointest my head with oil.

My cup overflows

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

I remember it in the
King James version.

The image of Jesus as
The Good Shepherd is a comforting image.
As comforting images go, it is one
of the best, at least one of the most popular. In those times in our lives in which the
valley is dark and life is anything but peaceful and pastoral and we are
surrounded by enemies and dangers, when we do fear evil, to know that the Lord
is my shepherd and that the Lord has a face, perhaps the face of Jesus as we
have imagined him or have seen images of him in artwork, is comforting. We can
reach this Jesus through meditation, prayer, scripture, and song. It restores the soul.

Even as I advocate critical
study of images, I find that image and others to be powerful and
comforting. In part because I grew up with it and it is
embedded in my psyche. But also because
there is a longing we humans have for a comfort and an anchor, for a
shepherd. That is why our hymns are
filled with that kind of imagery.

But the image of Jesus
or of God as the shepherd or the gate or the anointed one or God’s Son and so
forth is an image. They are all
images. They are the way our brains work
to get in touch with the ineffable.

We can make an idol of
any these images. We can make an idol of our religion as a whole. We can make an idol of the Bible, our images of God, Jesus
even. Idol-making
usually leads to violence. Think of the
craziness in Afghanistan over the Qur'an burning. Christians can be equally crazy when criticism
of creed or the Bible is equated with blasphemy. The
critical study of these images is important because it keeps them from becoming
idols.

Yet we wouldn’t want
our critical study of images to keep us from using them. That
is where I part ways with those who want to do away with religion. I think these symbols and images can help us
live meaningful and joyful lives.

In traditions that use
icons for prayer, the instruction is not to pray to the icon, but through the icon. The icon or image is a vehicle. The image of Jesus as Good Shepherd is, for
me, a vehicle, not an end. As I have
come to see it now, the feelings of comfort, of belonging, of care, of
peacefulness of purposefulness, are the real thing. Jesus
is the vehicle, but at the end of the day, you are your own shepherd.

You are your own
shepherd.

Those feelings of love,
comfort, belonging, care, and purposefulness are not dependent on something or
someone outside giving them to you. They
are yours. You can activate them within
by many means, including by the use of these beautiful images.

So go ahead, sing the
songs, pray the prayers alone or with others, and embrace the tradition with
awareness. Yes you walk the lonesome
valley. But you do so with the awareness
that the kingdom of God, the lamp of truth, and the love that holds the
universe is within you.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

This is my favorite story from the Gospel of John.
It is filled with irony and snark. There may have been an event
in the life of the historical Jesus that is the basis for this story.
The Jesus Seminar concluded by a narrow majority that the historical
Jesus might have cured one blind person by the use of spittle. Not
that the spittle was medicinal but that Jesus fit the profile of a
charismatic healer and the healing was of blindness due to psychosomatic
therapy.

The story became part of the lore about Jesus. In Mark 8:22 ff., Jesus cures a blind man with spittle. In Mark
10:46 ff., he cures Bartimaeus of his blindness. Both may be
narrative elaborations of one common event. Thus this story in John chapter 9 may be a further elaboration in which the author of John’s gospel places the healing in the context of another struggle altogether.

That is the struggle in John’s
time between these two infant sibling religions that arose after the
destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. These
two siblings became Judaism and Christianity. The common parent for
these two religions was Biblical Israel. The Gospel of John is one side of the squabble between these siblings. Jesus never had a conflict with “the Jews”. He was a Jew. That is John’s conflict. He creates these stories to present Jesus on his side.

Ancient
religion was about the sacrifice of animals. You go to the Temple or
to a holy shrine whether it is the Temple of Zeus or the Temple of YHWH
and you sacrifice animals. That is worship. It appears that a couple
of things are happening. The Temple in Jerusalem is destroyed. That
makes animal sacrifice a logistical problem. Also a consciousness has
been arising of thinking of worship without animal sacrifice. This
sacrificial practice is slowly becoming symbolic or commemorative.

At
least two paths develop, one centering on Jesus as sacrifice
represented by the Lord’s supper and another on Torah, circumcision, and
Sabbath. Neither requires animal sacrifice. One path becomes centered
in the church and the other in the synagogue. John’s gospel reflects this early division from the perspective of what would become church. When characters in John’s gospel are kicked out the synagogue that reflects the situation in the author of John’s time, not in the time of the historical Jesus.

So John
takes this story in the lore of Jesus of healing a blind person
probably psychosomatically and elaborates making it a teaching moment.
There is nothing psychosomatic in John’s telling of it. Jesus
has been exaggerated to become God incarnate. He barely touches the
ground. He speaks in exalted terms about himself. “I am the Light of
the World!” Just to show that this healing was no parlor trick, John has the blind person be born blind.

This
gives the disciples an opportunity to ask a theological question.
Whose sin caused him to be born blind? If you have a just God who runs
the place, you can’t have people suffer for no reason. You have to
blame someone, either the man who sinned (either in the womb or in a
previous life) or his parents. John sets up a classic question of theodicy.

By
the way, a side note. Since I mentioned theodicy, it might be fun to
go there for a minute. Theodicy is the attempt to explain the injustice
of God. If you have an all-powerful and all-good God, why is there
suffering and evil? Much thought, energy, and time have been spent on
that question. You can tie yourself in knots over this. We ask this
question in many different ways, whenever there is suffering in our own
lives or in the lives of others, we ask what is God doing?

If
you have found an answer that works for you of why an all-good and
all-powerful God can allow for suffering and evil, then I say go with
it. If you have an answer that works I don’t want to take it away from
you.

Personally,
I take the easy road. I think an all-good and all-powerful God on one
hand co-existing with suffering and evil on the other is a logical
impossibility. I find that any explanation for someone’s suffering by
implying that God could fix it if God wanted to is cold and cruel.

I
let go of the idea of an all-powerful God. The answer then is easy.
God is not all-powerful. There is no magic fix out there. Life is a
mix of good, evil, suffering, and joy, and we make the best of it.
But I do believe God is all-good. Not all-powerful but all-good.
That to me means Life is worth giving it a go and hanging on for the
ride. It also means that part of Life’s purpose is to look for and to
find decency, compassion and joy and to make life more decent,
compassionate, and joyful for ourselves and others. If you would like
to read someone who agrees with me, I recommend Rabbi Harold Kushner, When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

Here is how the Gospel of John handles the question of theodicy.

As
Jesus was leaving he saw a man who had been blind from birth. His
disciples asked him, “Rabbi, was it this man’s sin or his parents’ that
caused him to be born blind?”

Jesus
responded, “This man did not sin and neither did his parents. [He was
born blind] so God could display his work through him. We must carry
out the work of the one who sent me while the light lasts. Nighttime is
coming and then no one will be able to do any work. So long as I am in
the world I am the light of the world.”

This is an interesting answer. What John’s
Jesus is saying is that you can spend a lot of time worrying over who
to blame for misfortune and suffering. You can blame the victim. You
can blame the parents. You can even blame God. Or you can carry out
the work of healing while you have the light to do it.

John’s
gospel is a symbolic gospel. Nothing is to be taken literally. Jesus
is not just about Jesus. The figure Jesus is not a one of a kind
supernatural God-Man. I see him as representing the Authentic Human.
He is a symbol, an archetype perhaps, of what it means to be an
integrated, authentic, and aware human being. When Jesus speaks so
exaltedly about himself, we can read it that he is speaking exaltedly
about human beings.

Jesus is you when you see yourself as you truly are.

So the answer to the question of why do bad things happen to good people is this:

So you can do good today.

So pick up some spit and let’s go heal this guy. Here is the text:

With
that he spat on the ground, made mud with his saliva, and smeared the
mud on the man’s eyes. Then Jesus said to him, “Go, rinse off in the
pool of Siloam” (the name means “Emissary”). So he went over, rinsed
off [his eyes], and came back with his sight restored.

That
is all done in the first three small paragraphs, the first seven
verses. The rest of the narrative, the next couple of pages, the next
34 verses are about the responses to this healing. This is all John’s creation. Remember this is all fiction. John made this whole thing up. Part of this narrative is John’s sniping at his sibling, the synagogue. John writes later in the narrative:

“…the
Judeans had already agreed that anyone who acknowledged [Jesus as] the
Anointed One would be banned from their congregation.”

That is the historical issue behind John’s gospel. Those are John’s
fighting words. His crowd in his time as he sees it has been thrown
out of the synagogue. This is reminiscent of church splits.

You
know there are dozen (give or take a couple) Presbyterian denominations
in the United States. Last month, another one started. It is
another splinter off the PC(USA). Apparently, the PC(USA) does not
believe in the authority of Scripture. Because if we did we wouldn’t
allow gays to be ministers. If we really loved Jesus we wouldn’t
allow gays to be elders or deacons either. From our end we say the
issue might not be scripture but perhaps a wee bit of prejudice on your
side?

Now
imagine either side writing a gospel and putting Jesus in the script.
Imagine the snark and sarcasm that would be embedded in the text. I
know I could write a doozy. That is John’s gospel. The hurt and the anger jump off the page.

But
it isn’t all snark and sarcasm. It does rise above that on occasion.
Jesus certainly is a figure used to bolster one side in a sibling
squabble. But he also represents the authentic human. In order to read
it the second way, we have to allow ourselves to be the opponent of
Jesus in the text as well as his ally.

The
Pharisees or the Judeans or the leaders of the synagogue represent the
folks who cannot see beyond their own traditions. These are those who
believe that unless something receives their stamp of approval it cannot
be legitimate. Anyone who does work outside the bounds of the
authoritative structures is to be mocked and not acknowledged.

They are blind for doing that.

But…is there a sense in which we do the same on occasion? If honest I have to admit my blindness too.

There
are forms of religious expression that I find particularly blind,
silly, and superstitious even. I am suspicious of faith healers. I
don’t like the way some people read the Bible as if it is a supernatural
revelation from heaven. I don’t like certain views of Jesus dying for
sins and whatever.

I
think everyone would benefit from a dose of religious and scientific
literacy. But if I cannot open my eyes enough to see that not everyone
experiences life, our religious tradition, spirituality, and healing in
the same way I do, then I am like the Pharisees who ask smugly,

“We’re not blind are we?”

Well, yeah, kind of, you are.

There
are many different ways to live in this world. We all have our blind
spots. We have blind spots about ourselves and we have blind spots
about others. Sometimes others can point out our blind spots. That
can be painful or embarrassing. That should be done sparingly and with
love, not fake love, real love. Before we point out the speck in the
other’s eye, we could remove the plank in our own as Jesus is reported
to have said.

It
seems that the gift of insight, the ability to see with the heart, is
the gift that recognizes ironically, that we see very dimly. The
greater the insight, the less omniscient we become. The greater our
horizon of knowledge and wisdom, the larger is the abyss of the unknown.
Insight then becomes humility.

That is the insight of John’s
story. The blind beggar, the most humble of all has the gift of sight,
whereas the scholar, the leader, the person with authority, is blind.
The blindness on the part of the leaders in the text is not due to
their lack of knowledge or wisdom. The blindness is the unwillingness
to see that others can see where they cannot. It is the lack of
humility.

Humility
as insight is not hiding your truth. It is telling your truth but
recognizing that your truth is provisional, meaning it can change.
Humility also recognizes that your truth is one truth among many. None
of us has a corner on truth.

One
of the more rewarding aspects of ministry is being able to be present
when people have their eyes opened in such a way to see things about
themselves, or others or the significance of their lives. This is
different than trying to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. This is
different than the blind leading the blind. The posture of seeing is
one of permission-giving and of humility. It is a posture of
invitation. It is not forcing one’s truth on another but allowing
through the telling of your truth for others to discover theirs. It is
the gift of listening so that others may find the space to become
whole.

Our
story began with the disciples asking Jesus whose sin caused this man
to be born blind. Jesus turns the question. He says it is nobody’s
sin. It is life. In fact, it is an opportunity.

To
the suffering and blindness in the world, you have the opportunity,
with your life, with your truth, with your limited sight, to respond
with compassion and healing.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Evolution Sunday, now Evolution Weekend
began seven years ago as a project by biologist, Michael Zimmerman.
His goal was and is to ensure that public schools don’t get snookered by
those who want to pass off Creationism or Intelligent Design as
science. He takes on the Creationists regularly at the Huffington Post. He is my guest this week on my radio program.

He managed to find over 12,000 Christian clergy to sign a letter
supporting Evolution and stating that Evolution is not in conflict with
faith. The reason Professor Zimmerman asked clergy to sign this
letter is that he realized that most people if forced to choose between
religion and science will choose religion. If religion is pitted
against science they will choose to believe their preacher rather than
their science teacher.

The comforting truths of faith are preferred to the skepticism of science.

This
is not surprising when you think about it. Human beings long to be
loved and long to belong. We enjoy being flattered. So we believe it
when we are told that we have immortal souls that will live forever and
that we are embraced by divine beings. We enjoy the comfort of knowing
that everything that happens to us is part of a divine plan as opposed
to random occurrence. We like to affirm that we have a book like the Bible that is authoritative and truthful and that we have a figure like Jesus who saves us from all our troubles.

Science offers...

instead of a divine being, impersonal laws,

instead of absolute truth, a method of doubt,

instead of mind over matter, mind as (probably) a product of matter.

Today
we celebrate the birth and the accomplishments of Charles Darwin, who
showed us that human beings have much more in common with apes than with
angels. Everyday the evidence that we gather publicly from using
the scientific method affirms that human beings owe more to biology than
theology for our existence.

Normally,
this kind of talk gets ministers in trouble. Thankfully, I preach in a
church that allows for great diversity of belief. Bring your own god
or none. I affirm the right of anyone to believe whatever they wish
to believe. You have the freedom and are encouraged to take your own
journey. You have the freedom to reject part or all of anything I
say.

That
said, my experience also tells me that given the chance and the
permission to question the truths of their inherited religion, people
will grow to appreciate the world that the scientific method shows us
and they will find a way to integrate this exciting new world with their
faith.

I personally think that is an important task.

This
is true not only for biology or cosmology but also with biblical or
theological studies. While the churches as a whole cannot seem (as of
yet) to get beyond the Christ of creed, biblical scholars show us the
historical person of Jesus. They also show us that the authors of
biblical texts were human beings in specific historical contexts.
These studies show us the origin of the creeds, and that those origins
are far more natural than supernatural.

This is the seventh Evolution Sunday at First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton.
I am in the midst of my seventh year as minister at this church.
What I have been doing for these past nearly seven years through
liturgy, sermon, poetry, and so forth, is to give expression to the
sacred quality of life.

That is a religion.

That is faith.

I
believe our sacred story, that is our 13.7 billion year cosmic story,
is holy and beautiful. It is the one creation myth (and I say myth
in the best sense of that word) that is universal. It is far more
interesting than Genesis 1. It isn’t that Genesis 1 is wrong, it is that it was a product of its time and times have changed.

I believe that our sacred story of the evolution of life on Earth through natural selection is to use a phrase by biologist Richard Dawkins, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Tracing back our ancestors to the very beginning of life is a Divine work.

This
is not just dry science. This is not materialism. This does not lack
spiritual depth. This, I argue, is the very depth of the spiritual.

I
also believe that it is sacred work to understand the cultural
accomplishments of human beings, which include of course, religion.
Human beings created the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, the Qur’an,
and every piece of literature, artwork, sacred story, and song. Human
beings invented meditation and prayer. The angels and the gods are the
products of human creativity.

To say that is in my view an elevation of the human, not a demotion.

What
I am talking about today is religion not science. I am talking about
faith. I think we have reached a point in which the sources of religion
and faith are no longer those artifacts of human culture such as the Bible or the Qur’an.
The sources of faith and meaning are now our common origin stories
that we are learning through public knowledge. The source of faith is
the universe as we are observing it. Included in that is the broad
spectrum of human culture that includes the Bible, the Qur'an and every sacred text from every religion..

In our text from John’s gospel, Jesus is reported to have said,

“Unless a kernel falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

By including this I think the author of John’s
gospel was suggesting that creativity cannot happen if we don’t allow
the old way to die. This is true for everything from kernels of grain
to the cosmos. Unless a star dies, new planets cannot form. Unless
human beings die, new human beings cannot live. Unless there is death,
there cannot be life. This is true for biological life as well as
cultural life.

Old ideas need to die so new ones can be born.

An old idea that is dying is religion based on cultural artifacts as if those artifacts are absolute truth.

I
realize that saying this will sound controversial, but I invite you
think about it before you dismiss it. Unless Christianity, based on Bible
and creed dies, a new faith based on what we know of the universe
cannot be born. This is true for Islam as well and for all the major
religions.

Thanks
to science we now have a common cosmic story and a story of life on
Earth. What we don’t have yet is a way to celebrate that story
religiously. We have not yet found the myths, rituals, and symbols to
make that story sing. I think that Evolution Sunday is a start in
that direction.

There is another part to this.

One of the tasks to a life that matters is to develop a sense of personal meaning. It is to address the question, “Why am I here?” with some answer, however provisional.

“What is my purpose? Why am I here? What gives me meaning?”

Earlier
I said that I affirm the right of anyone to believe whatever they wish
to believe. I do. I also think there may be a better answer. While
it is good to be free to develop our own sense of meaning it it is also
good to work toward a shared meaning. We can believe whatever we want
on our own, but what if we at least could find some things in common in
which to believe?

I
want to offer a couple of commitments that we might share regarding
this new religion, this religion of this life, this religion whose
source is the unfolding universe as we discover it.

We are at a very interesting point in history. Within the last couple of decades we have been able to see through telescopes
to the earliest galaxies of the universe as they were forming. That
should blow us out of our pews. Within the last several decades we
have been able to trace the biological evolution of species including
the human species. We can look back at our earliest ancestors.

We are learning more and more faster and faster.

But,
we have also reached a point of limits regarding the Earth’s capacity
to sustain human life. We are there on the edge, seven billion people
and growing. Earth will spin for hundreds of millions of years.
Humans may not make it through the next century.

I suggest we might share the following beliefs:

First,
that human beings are important and valuable and worth keeping. We
are as far as we know the only living things that can contemplate the
universe. We are the universe conscious of itself. It took 13.7
billion years for the universe to "create" us. We ought to be thinking
that we can flourish for millions of years into the future.

Second,
the choices we make today will influence whether or not human beings
will live through the challenges of the next century. We have already
made a number of choices that have affected our planet that are already
irreversible.

The
invitation is to think about the choices we make not just for next few
months or years or decades or even the next seven generations but the
next 1,000 generations.

This is faith. This is religion.

It
is a religion that is based on a belief that human beings matter and
that Earth is home and life’s meaning and sacred worth is to be found
here.

The greatest act of faith is to act on behalf of and to trust in an existence that none of us will ever see.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.Nothing
which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any
immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

On this Evolution Sunday, I put myself out there for you. Here are my beliefs:

I believe in this beautiful ball of water, this gorgeous Earth.

I believe in human beings and that we have sacred worth.

I believe that we will find a way to live sustainably with Earth for a long, long time.

I believe that courageous people sharing this faith today can make it happen.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

“If
you don’t eat the Human One’s flesh and drink his blood, you won’t have
life in you. Everyone who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has
unending life, and I will raise them on the last day. For my flesh is
real food and my blood real drink.”

It is no wonder that

“When the disciples heard this, many responded, “This sort of talk is hard to take. Who can take it seriously?”

That is the challenge of the Gospel of John. How do you take it seriously?

One
way is to make a ritual out of it. Call it Holy Communion and once a
week have people eat a piece of bread and drink some wine, tell them
they are eating Christ’s body, the bread from heaven, and you got
yourself a religion.

That is not so bad, if we know what we are doing.

How do you take this seriously?

The only way I can imagine that we might take it seriously is to treat it like a Zen koan. Such as,

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.”

What
does that mean? The Zen teacher would say, go wrestle with it and
figure it out yourself. Koans are striking, puzzling statements. They
are not riddles. The teacher who offers a koan is not looking for a
right answer, but the state of mind of the student. A koan is a
device used to help students become aware of who they are and what is
real.

The
Zen tradition didn’t begin until about six centuries after Jesus. I
am not making an historical correspondence. I am not saying Jesus or
the author of John was a secret Zen teacher. I am simply
suggesting that the way to take Jesus seriously may be not to take him
seriously. Maybe the author of John’s gospel is playing with our heads.

In the story, Jesus recognizes that the disciples are puzzled and so he offers a clue:

“So, does this shock you? What if you were to see the Human One going back to where he was to begin with?”

In other words what if you were to see reality? What if you were to see my true nature? He goes on:

“The spirit is life-giving; flesh is good for nothing. The words I have used are spirit and life.”

It could be something like this this: Jesus is saying,

“Since
the flesh is nothing, telling you to eat my flesh is like saying, if
you see the Buddha on the road, kill him. Because the Buddha you see
is not really the Buddha. Buddha is in you. Similarly, the flesh you
eat is not really me. Those who 'eat my flesh' get that.”

In
this reading, eating Jesus’s flesh and drinking his blood is a way of
shattering an illusion and discovering one’s true self.

The question that I have when I read John’s
gospel is how to understand the figure of Jesus. Is John portraying
him as a supernatural being who became a human being, did stuff, and
then scooted back up to heaven? If that is the case, I am not so
interested. Those myths are a dime a dozen. If that is the case, I
am like the followers who say,

“Who can take this seriously?”

But, if Jesus is John’s way of saying this is what it means to be a human being, then maybe I will hang around for a little bit.

One clue that Jesus represents the myth of the authentic human is that throughout John, Jesus is certainly sure of himself. He has no doubt about who is, where he comes from, and where he is going.

Because
this story is written in the first century, there is heaven up above
where the gods live just above the fixed stars. Earth is the center of
the universe. Above us is the moon, the sun, the planets all orbiting
around Earth. Way out there are the fixed stars also traveling around
Earth. Above all of that is heaven, the abode of the gods where Jesus
is from and where he is going.

All
of those images such as “from above” have to be reimagined in our time.
So what might this look like in our universe with a naturalistic
world-view? I think those images such as “from above”, “eternal
life”, “bread from heaven”, all refer to that center of identity.

Who am I?

What is my value?

What am I doing here?

What is my purpose?

What do I want to make of my life?

Those
are the kinds of questions we aren’t sure if we want to ask all of the
time, because it is sometimes a bit easier allowing others to define our
lives for us. It is easier not to pay attention to this amazing life
that we share, that is existence. It might be easier to let others
tell us who we are. And others will. We are a market share or a
voting block or taxable commodity or potential cannon fodder. We are
what the powers that be want us to be to the extent that we have value
to them.

So
Jesus comes along. It is the same world. There are different symbols
and a different guy is in power, but it is the same dehumanizing world.
Jesus says to that,

“Eat me.

“Eat my flesh, drink my blood.

That is what I think of that.

I am not the flesh of this world.

I am the spirit of life.

I will not be defined by your categories.”

A
couple of weeks ago, a new member of our community, Presbyterian
minister, Rev. Don Steele, talked to the youth group. At our Wednesday
night program, we were learning about Martin Luther King. I asked Don
to come and speak because Don was in Memphis going to college in 1968.
That was during the sanitation workers’ strike. Martin Luther King
went there as you recall. Don marched with King on behalf of the
sanitation workers. King was assassinated there in Memphis.

The
sanitation workers were striking in part of because of wages, but also
because of the way they were treated. They were not treated with
dignity. There was not a place to even clean up before they went home.
They had to ride on the bus smelling like garbage. One event in
particular triggered the strike. Two men were accidentally crushed by a
garbage truck and the city provided no compensation to the family
members.

These
sanitation workers marched in the streets of Memphis. It wasn’t just
about money. It was about human dignity. They marched with signs that
read, “I am a man.”

“I am a man.”

That is for what they were marching. Their humanity. They weren’t asking permission for it. They were declaring it.

"I am a man."

It
is as though they were declaring that they were from above. They were
not identified with the worldly categories of garbage worker. They
were human beings who happened to do this service for the community and
they expected to be treated with respect.

That is what it takes sometimes.

When
the powers that be do not serve the people but serve instead their own
profits, they need to be shaken down. They need to be called out and
called down. It is not wrong for a business to make a profit. A
profit allows the business to survive in order that it can continue to
serve. But when the profit becomes not the means but the end then it
becomes, to use an ancient spiritual word, demonic.

That
is what we have in our world today. We have demonic corporations
masquerading as human beings and not serving the people, but serving
their own profits. I am not saying that every business is that way, of
course, but many are. We have politicians, not all by any means, but
many, who instead of serving the people have sold out to the money these
corporations foist upon them in order to stay in office and get
elected.

We need people to stand up and say,

“I am a man. I am a woman. I am a human being.”

When
our mountains are destroyed, our water polluted for the sake of
corporate profits and at the expense of the lives of human beings, we
need to say,

“I am a man. I am a woman. I am a human being. This is Earth. This is home. This is not your commodity.”

Sometimes
speaking on behalf of real human beings instead of corporations who
masquerade as human beings can be risky. But it is what human beings
do. These are the final words of the last speech of Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968. He had received threats to his life. He talked about that.

And
then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk
about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of
our sick white brothers?Well, I don't
know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it
really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.And I don't mind.Like
anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But
I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And
He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've
seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to
know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!And so I'm happy, tonight.I'm not worried about anything.I'm not fearing any man!Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!!

That was King’s last speech.

This speech shows that King had a glimpse of who he really was and what mattered.

The Gospel of John is a weird gospel.

But
it is only weird when we take it literally. It is actually a powerful
story of resistance to the powers that be when they become corrupt and
dehumanizing. The Gospel of John provides a key and a clue in the person of Jesus who declares that he is the Human One, the Bread of Life, and so can we be.

These
struggles that we have been witnessing around the world, the Arab
spring, the occupy movement, and struggles for equality and civil rights
for LGBT people in this country, the struggle for women’s value in many
African countries, the struggle of the poor everywhere, is about human
dignity, not just bread. It is not just bread, but as the song whose
lyrics are in the bulletin, we march for bread and roses.

Bread, yes, but also roses.

Bread and dignity. The Bread of Life.

When
we come later this morning and partake of bread and cup, for me, it is
about a community of human beings gathering and uniting in a ritual that
affirms life and dignity. It is reminding and being reminded of who
we are and what we are here to do.

Audio and text of my sermons are now on Southminster's web page. You can also get audio of sermons and podcasts of my radio programs at one place on my Soundcloud site. Podcasts of only my radio shows are on Podomatic. Thank you for listening and reading!